Chapter 13

Chapter

Thirteen

SELENE

" W e're fucked," I tossed the bag of jewelry onto the table that Minka, Cordelia, Keva, and Ric currently occupied inside the library. Ausra and Phaedra were off to the side with Igor and Crodic, the scale-covered book Ille Liber Divinus opened in the middle of them as they took notes for translation and spoke amongst themselves quietly.

Everyone was pulling their weight, putting in the hours every day so we could attack this fucked up darkness that was overtaking us. More guilt riddled my bones as Minka stared at me with bright expectant gray eyes despite my negative words. Everyone needed answers and I had failed, too clouded with my grief and misery to even ask the necessary questions.

I had contemplated on how I would tell everyone that I most likely pissed off the Sibyl and then proceeded to have a mental breakdown over my soul being lost rather than ask about the High King and the Crown of Daemonium. But as I walked through the tattered gardens in Gambriel's stronghold that Wesley and I explored months ago, I decided that full transparency was the best.

These people were my friends, my family, and even though I had been royally fucking up over the past few months, they hadn't abandoned me and they wouldn't now. The shame that was washing over me quickly vanished as I stared at their faces, so open and true. This band of rebels were my family and with the looks of love and forgiveness shining in their eyes, I knew that they wouldn't turn away from me and my mistakes.

Ric could see the distraught expression on my face, so he did what he always did—lightened the mood with humor. "Not all of us," he tossed his arm around Keva with a large grin on his tattooed face, to which she swatted it and turned towards me.

The Queen of Gambriel still looked utterly exhausted from the overexertion of using her power to fight off Atrium's minions, rebuilding Rimont, and now these endless study sessions. She was burning her candle at both ends, dark circles under her cerulean eyes. "What happened?" she questioned while I pulled out a chair and sat between her and Minka.

Just like when I first arrived at the Rebellion's outpost in Gambriel, Minka grabbed a plate for me from the center of the table and started piling it with roasted chicken, vegetables, and small potatoes. "You need to eat something and then you can tell us," Minka placed the mini feast before me.

Only I didn't dive into my dinner, my stomach was still turning from the conversation I had with the Sibyl. "Thanks, Minks, but I don't think I'll be able to eat until I get this off my chest."

Her pale hand reached out and gripped mine, "Are you okay?" But with the look of worry in her gray eyes, she already knew that answer—no, I wasn't okay. I royally fucked up. I could've gotten more answers if I'd asked the right questions but I was selfish and self-centered, my mind consumed by Emrys constantly. I just shook my head and sighed before looking around the faerie lit library at the people surrounding me.

Minka, Cordelia, Ric, Keva, Igor, Ausra, Phaedra, and Crodic.

They all looked at me expectantly and that familiar feeling of dread crept over me. They wanted answers, needed them just as badly as I did. The eight people in this room all wanted the same thing that I did when I'd first come to the Castle of Gambriel. A free world, a place where you didn't have to live in fear because of the blood running through your veins. We'd seen it done in Jindera, we knew it existed and was possible.

We could exist, and that was enough.

These amiable people made me feel safe and loved. They didn't judge me for my actions and it was that kindness that'd been shown to me day after day that gave me the courage to admit, "I've been selfish and narrow minded." Ric opened his mouth to object but I stuck my hand up, stopping him. I gave him a pleading look, my emerald eyes glistening in the faerie lights. "Please, let me get this out."

He snapped his mouth shut, narrowing his hazel eyes at me. Taking another breath, I went on, "I've only been focused on what was best for me and that was getting Emrys back."

This time it was Minka's turn to interrupt but she just grumbled under her breath, "That's what's best for all of us."

Squeezing her hand lightly, I kept going, trying to fight the tears from falling. "I…" I cleared my throat. "I keep drifting further into a person that I swore I never would become. The Sibyl came when I called her but she could see that I wasn't the same anymore." No one batted an eye, they all just watched me with equally concerned expressions, like they were more worried about me rather than the fate of our world. "I was distraught, so distracted by my anger and grief that I didn't even ask her about Infernum or the High King."

This time a tear did fall but Keva dabbed at my cheek with a handkerchief. "We're all going through a rough time right now, dear." Her blue eyes sparkled, so much love reflected in them that it made my heart hurt. She had another one of Ric's tunics on, too big for her slender frame that a shoulder was drooping, making her dark brown skin look so lustrous in the firelight. When she looked at me like that, she resembled a goddess… a true mother of the earth and its people. "You need to give yourself grace. We all make mistakes, especially emotional ones."

Gods, the Queen of Gambriel was right as always but I didn't know how to give myself that grace when I kept royally fucking up. Kept making mistake after mistake. Her words did their part though, they gave me at least enough courage to keep going. "The Sibyl could see the darkness embedding itself within my soul and she refused to work with us if I was lost to that gloom."

Cordelia gasped, a hand flying to her chest in shock. She tucked a blue curl behind her ear and shook her head in confusion. "But you're not lost. You're here , on the right side and fighting against what she's talking about."

"But I've gone about all of this the wrong way." Dragging my hands to my lap, I intertwined my fingers to stop them from shaking. "I've been killing with no remorse in the name of love, for him . Taking souls left and right as if I were the Creators or the Fates. That's not what a good ruler does, let alone a good person."

"But it's for love," Minka's nose crinkled as she clenched her hands into fists.

"True, but it still doesn't make it okay."

"Love can make you do a lot of things you would never dream of doing," Ric nodded his head in agreement. "You've been shutting down, babe, and leaving for weeks at a time and that worried all of us. But we all understood why you were doing what you were." He reached across the table with a tattooed arm and gave my arm a light tap. "We all love you and we're here for you no matter what. And it's okay that we didn't get answers from the Sibyl. We will figure it out, I know we will."

"I love you guys too," I sniffled and wiped my nose with my shoulder. "I never want to take you all for granted and I'm sorry that I have been."

Now Minka was crying, her pale cheeks all flushed as she threw her arms around me. "We will always love you, even though you smell like a wet horse."

A laugh bubbled out of my throat. My clothes were still damp from walking through the wintry rain and I definitely did need a bath, but I now had some good news to share. "Despite all of that, the Sibyl did give us some help." I turned to Keva and asked, "Do you have that parchment with that chant on it?"

The Queen of Gambriel nodded and shot up from her chair to a few tables over that were littered with open books and more inked-up papers. She grabbed some ink and a quill along with the parchment and then stuck it in front of me. Taking the quill, I quickly dabbed it in some ink and wrote down the two extra lines that the Sibyl showed me.

The stars and Fates have spoken:

A God with the power of the moon, broken.

Chaos ends only where it begins,

All will ultimately answer for their sins.

Blood of fire, soul of shadow,

Power to gain will only end in sorrow.

Minka's eyes scanned the paper with speed before she looked at me, repeating the final line. "Power to gain will only end in sorrow. Is it talking about the High King gaining power from the crown?"

"Could be," Keva nodded. "Or that could be completely wrong. It's a riddle, a play on words that wants you to think one thing when it means something else entirely."

"Blood of fire could mean Selene again," Ric interjected, popping a potato into his mouth.

Crodic went next, his gnarled green hand smoothing the rolled parchment down. "Soul of shadow could be her too."

"There's more." Eight pairs of eyes all turned their focus from the page and back onto me. Their intent gazes made my heart race but I ignored it and told them about what the Sibyl wanted me to do. "She said that we could find those answers if I proved myself as Bringer of Light."

"Prove yourself?" Cordelia questioned with a raised eyebrow. "You freed the entire slave camp in Alryne and killed multiple corrupt fae assholes. What else is there to prove?"

The Princess of the Circadian's words made sense, but I still felt that deep-seated guilt, that shame , that I wasn't doing enough.

"The Sibyl wants me to go to the Court of Shadows to retrieve the Bellator Amulet." My mind drifted back to her chilling words, Find me after, Moonlight and I shall help you find yourself too. I pushed them to the back of my mind, fighting off the shivering reminder, and focused on my assigned task. "I'm supposed to search where I've already searched before and then we will get our answers."

"Bellator Amulet?" In true Minka fashion, she had the exact same look of confusion as I did. Her fingernail was tapping the parchment, right over the freshly-inked words. "And where and what is the Court of Shadows?"

"Not a clue," I shrugged at the same time Ric said, "Umbra," with a haunted look in his hazel eyes.

"The Court of Shadows is Umbra?" I queried before giving it a thought and like a moth to a flame, it hit me. "It would make sense because Umbra was the first place I looked for him, but we know he's not there."

"Court of Shadows is just another name for Umbra, coming from the tribes of dreamwalkers and shadowmakers that resided in that territory before the High King wiped most of them out." Ric was gritting his teeth, tattooed hands clenched into fists as the words came out. "And the Bellator Amulet, well… that is more of a legend. I don't know the true origins of it besides that it's a necklace that was passed through generations of warriors in Atrium, then lost over time. Or, it never existed at all."

We were all stunned into silence, looking at Ric in complete shock. None of us had ever heard that nickname for Atrium's most feared territory, nor had we even caught wind about some warrior amulet within it. Even Keva, who was older than all of us and had lived through some of this history, looked surprised.

The winners really did rewrite history.

"So you go back to Umbra, find that necklace, and then what?" Minka sat back in her chair with her arms crossed.

"I'm supposed to have a friend show me the light of my sins," I repeated the Sibyl's odd wording. "And then our answers will be revealed once I prove myself."

"That's pretty damn confusing," she admitted with an arched blonde eyebrow.

"You're telling me," I shook my head, a migraine beginning to bloom.

Ric looked to Keva with a question in his earthy eyes and all she did was squeeze his hand, having a silent conversation with him before Ric stood up from his chair.

"I'll take you to Umbra." His hulking form created a shadow over me, "I know those cursed grounds well from my time hiding out from the High King before I got onto the ship for Ladon."

"Are you sure, Ric?" Standing from my chair too, I put a hand over my racing heart. I knew that going back to that place would bring up a lot of horrid memories for him and I didn't want to put him through that agony again. He deserved peace and happiness. Not this . It could be a suicide mission for all we knew. "I don't know what they're going to make me do or see, or what the hell is even happening and I don't want you getting hurt."

"I'm a big boy, Sel," he chuckled despite the strained expression in his soil-colored irises. It was like the past was already haunting him, ghosts from his former life creeping into his present. "I can take care of myself."

"Elric…" I started to trail off, worried if this was the right thing to do, but he stopped me by placing both his hands on my shoulders.

"This is my decision and I'm going with you," he promised, his eyes crinkling in the corners with a genuine smile breaking through. "You can try to stop me but that'll require a lot of restraints."

Keva snorted in her chair beside us, throwing her hand up in front of her face.

"Someone will need to restrain me from puking," Minka gagged at the thought of Ric and Keva with their bedroom activities, and I couldn't stop the laughter that fell out of me.

"Sorry to interrupt," Ausra was on the other side of the table with the scale-covered book closed in front of my plate of food. Igor and Crodic were on one side of her, stuffing bits of roast chicken into their mouths, pure exhaustion echoing on both of their green faces. "But we finished translating it."

"Holy Gods," I breathed out in absolute awe. "That was so fast. You guys are amazing."

Phaedra smiled with pride at her wife, her black hair long and sleek today. "She sure is."

Ausra rolled her brown eyes and swept her hand out at Crodic and Igor who were already loading their plates up again with some much-needed dinner. "It wouldn't have been nearly as fast if we didn't have their help."

"That's because they're both marvelous," Cordelia said in a sing-songy voice that caused Igor's leafy skin to blush as Crodic gave a beaming smile and mock-bowed.

"It was really insightful." Ausra rubbed her hands together in excitement before taking a seat, "Who's ready for storytime?"

Ric and I returned to our spots as Phaedra quickly made herself a plate. We all gathered around the table and situated ourselves, waiting for Ausra to begin. She cleared her throat like she was about to perform, " Ille Liber Divinus means Book of the Divine in our old langu?—

The double doors of the library swung open and slammed against the book covered walls, interrupting our conversation as a stableboy ran into the room. His blonde hair and lightly tanned skin was covered in mud and sludge as he panted, "The Galdurs. Something is very wrong. Th–th–they," his teeth chattered against one another as he stuttered. "They're dead."